Sunday, April 26, 2009

Oo that smell

It's that smell that escapes your room, as if you had just opened it for the first time after a long summer break. It is not a bad scent, perhaps it's the best smelling musk possible, while still being categorized as one.

Had it been the end of fall or mid-February, I might be weary that I had waited too long to clean my apartment or that the air had grown far too stale and I needed a fan.

But it's nearing the end of college. And I purposely breathe in deep.

This smell is sweet; if nostalgia was a perfume, this would be the college edition. This is the smell of moving into your freshman dorm room and all the accompanying excitement and glory of beginning a new chapter in life.

I am not sure my exact motivation for my celebration for the return of that smell. Maybe I hope that my freshman feelings of full-fledged ambition will once again flow through my veins and envelop my mood. Maybe I have been waiting since the first snow of the year for it to be warm again and spend my days comfortably outside. Maybe I know that this smell means change.

I should not be so surprised that I find myself once again greeted with this smell at the end of my time at Syracuse University.

I feel like these last few weeks are, and will be, very strange.

None of us seniors are living in the present. We are either reflecting on our past-- the last four years on the Hill-- or anticipating the future--packing and planning respectfully. Majority of our plans or meetings are made to either celebrate the achievements we have made in undergrad or to make closure to places or people that might not be here when we visit again in 10 years.

I do not think I will wake up once on the next fourteen days and live it as an ordinary one. People will ask what my plans are for post-grad, or invite me to their last party. Friends will invite me to get dinner downtown for the last time or insist we go to Chuck's because we only have so much time.

Nostalgia is defined as "a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition," which is inherently backwards-looking. But I think it can be something relating to the present, but only within a unique, unparalleled span of time: two weeks leading up to graduation. It is now that we have that foresight to know that these moments are the ones we are going to remember vividly and wish we could go back to; nostalgia is in our presence.

So for the next 14 days, let's stop thinking about the past and stop worrying the future; let's live in the now. We are going to wish we had.